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Does anyone know if the [0-3].ubuntu.pool.ntp.org records ever pointed to stratum 1 servers. I've been looking around but I couldn't find an answer.

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  • AFAK there is no commitment about ntp.org records to point to stratum 1 servers. If you really need stratum 1 servers, you have to test each one and hunt for stratum 1 servers.
    – FedKad
    May 14, 2019 at 9:13
  • @FedonKadifeli My problem is I have an NTP server using the ubuntu pools as sources for synchronization. An application attached to that server stopped to accept NTP updated and I was told they are enforcing a policy where they accept only servers with stratum <=2. As it was working before and I haven't touched the NTP server config, it was probably a change in the NTP sources. After checking it seems I was connected to only stratum2 servers. I've started looking into the ubuntu pools and there were indeed some stratum 1 servers aswell. Probably it was just a different source. Thx for the help May 14, 2019 at 10:36
  • You can add some stratum 1 servers to your ntp config file and see if your problem is solved.
    – FedKad
    May 15, 2019 at 6:01

1 Answer 1

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Some pool servers are stratum 1, but they can vary up to stratum 4 depending on which ones you get in the DNS response - ubuntu.pool.ntp.org is a vendor zone of the volunteer-maintained NTP pool, and the servers in it can and do change from DNS query to DNS query based on the weighting system which the pool uses to distribute load. There is no difference between using [0-3].ubuntu.pool.ntp.org and using [0-3].pool.ntp.org - the only thing it does is allow the pool DNS servers to know that the query is coming from a system based on the Ubuntu default configuration.

There's nothing magical about having a stratum 1 source. NTP is designed to maintain close time synchronisation at every stratum in the network. But if you want to be sure that you're getting a stratum 2 or lower server, consider getting your time from a more fixed pool of servers, such as ntp.ubuntu.com (which are all stratum 2) or time.apple.com (which are all stratum 1).

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